The Little League® Europe and Africa Region officially announced its selection of umpires for the 2019 Europe and Africa Regional tournaments. In addition to announcing the selections, the region also hosted a regional training clinic for 28 students from nine different countries across the region, marking the first umpire clinic in several years for the region.
“The trainees were extremely enthusiastic and showed an extreme level of dedication which allowed for a great experience of our training program,” said Tom Rawlings, Little League Director of Umpire Development. “Despite some language barriers, all of our umpires were able to use the universal language of baseball and softball to understand what we were teaching and really took away some important lessons from our clinic.”
Moving forward, the Europe and Africa Region’s umpire training hopes to continue to move toward a more similar training program to that of the United States and eventually be operated solely by the region’s volunteers without outside assistance.
Below is the list of regional volunteer umpires for 2019:
Little League Baseball® Europe and Africa Region Qualifier
- David Ducat (Ill. District 6)
- Sam Griffith (Calif. District 68)
- William Karpowicz (Calif. District 4)
- Mark Lucas (Fla. District 23)
- Michael Montgomery (Germany)
- Neil Morrison (Germany)
- Blake Taylor (United Kingdom)
Little League Baseball Europe and Africa Region Tournament
- Zilvinas Bareika (Lithuania)
- David Ducat (Ill. District 6)
- Stephane Giraud (France)
- Sam Griffith (Calif. District 68)
- William Karpowicz (Calif. District 4)
- Mark Lucas (Fla. District 23)
- Aina Rajohnson (France)
- Arnoldas Ramanauskas (Lithuania)
- Stefan Rohrbeck (Germany)
- Blake Taylor (United Kingdom)
- Michael Van Hove (Belgium)
Little League® Intermediate (50/70) Baseball Europe and Africa Region Tournament
- Duane More (Fla. District 23)
- Gerard Takiguchi (Calif. District 57)
Junior League Baseball Europe and Africa Region Tournament
- Torben Begines (Idaho District 1)
- William Berger (Calif. District 63)
- Marcin Mankowski (Poland)
- Jules Martina (Netherlands)
- Russ Ruslender (Calif. District 6)
- Ken Saxer (Calif. District 41)
- Tomas Spilauer (Czech Republic)
- Timothy Sullivan (Wash. District 9)
- Fred Tempels (Germany)
- Rik van de Keer (Netherlands)
- Ric Zwanenberg (Netherlands)
Senior League Baseball Europe and Africa Region Tournament
- David Bragg (Calif. District 57)
- Michael Hewitt (Calif. District 54)
Little League Softball® Europe and Africa Region Tournament (All Divisions)
- Sharon Adams (Fla. District 20)
- David Bennett (Wash. District 8)
- Michelle DeRosa (Ill. District 8)
- Pavel Kaspercik (Czech Republic)
- Jaroslav Kosnar (Czech Republic)
- Adrian Mens (Netherlands)
- J.M. Merkx (Netherlands)
- Terry Thompson (Ore. District 2)
- Vout van der Horst (Netherlands)
- John van Renswoude (Netherlands)
- Jac van Riel (Netherlands)